Sheffield United's Chris Basham back on the road to recovery after 'concerning' injury lay-off

Basham was one of four Premier League ever-presents for the Blades last season, but all have missed matches this.

The 32-year-old played in Heckingbottom's first game in temporary charge, a 5-0 defeat in Leicester City, but received a kick in training days later and has been unable to play since. That such an apparently innocuous injury has taken so long to heal has been a worry, and the club appear to have paid the price for moving too quickly, but now feel they are on top of the problem.

“It's a concern that we haven't been able to use him and play him but he's progressing how they would want him to now,” said Heckingbottom, who will have to do without the defender again at home to Brighton and Hove Albion on Saturday. “It was just a really strange injury, it wasn't a muscle tear just a bleed in the area and whenever he did exercise that bleed was maybe pressing on a nerve and just giving him real pain in that area.

“When he did try to come back after the first two or three weeks he could still feel it, it was too soon. It's one of those things where impact injuries, we'll always say, 'Run them off' but sometimes you get those little complications with them.”

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